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Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 32, No. 2
December 2005
Vangermeersch Manuscript Award Winner,
2003
Shanta S. K. Davie
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
ACCOUNTING’S USES IN
EXPLOITATIVE HUMAN
ENGINEERING: THEORIZING
CITIZENSHIP, INDIRECT RULE AND
BRITAIN’S IMPERIAL EXPANSION
Abstract: This historical study starts from the argument that financial
economic quantification using accounting concepts and analysis has
always been an essential and integral part of effective policies and
activities for Britain’s empire building. Theories of citizenship are
used in particular to examine the close association between account-ing
and imperial policies during British indirect rule in Fiji. Through
an examination of archival data and other relevant source materials,
the paper highlights the ways in which accounting helped translate
imperial forms of oppression and injustice into everyday work prac-tice.
Indirect rule generally required the separation and subordination
of the native population as subjects, and their exploitation within
imperial hegemonic structures. This research is about a British re-gime
of specific and deliberate power construct through which the
indigenous population of subjects were oppressed and excluded from
citizenship and from civil society. Focus is on the social, economic
and institutional relations that determined a unique pattern of in-equality
and the way in which accounting was effectively mobilized to
serve the aims of British imperialism through indirect rule.
Acknowledgments: I am truly grateful to Alisdair Dobie, Tony Lowe,
Stephen Walker, participants at the 9th World Congress of Accounting Histori-ans
held in Melbourne 30th July-2nd August 2002, and the two anonymous
reviewers of this journal for their comments and helpful suggestions on earlier
drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to Edinburgh Centre for European Finan-cial
Studies and Heriot-Watt University for financial assistance.
Submitted November 2004
Revised August 2005
Accepted August 2005